


i get a little bit genghis khan

by Murf1307



Category: Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, Foe Yay, Inspired by Music, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-10 06:49:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15943997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Murf1307/pseuds/Murf1307
Summary: Lex is a greedy bastard, but the thing he wants most has always been just out of reach.





	i get a little bit genghis khan

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Napstaspook](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Napstaspook/gifts).



> This fic is inspired by "Genghis Khan" by Miike Snow, and references the Blackest Night event.

The thing is, ultimately, that Lex is a greedy bastard.

He knows it, Superman knows it, and, after that incident with the Orange Lantern ring, so does the whole damn universe, probably.  He's greedy for power, for control, for knowledge, for money, for sex and alcohol and people's respect. He hungers for perfection, both in himself and in his lovers.

The closest he's ever found is still, after all these years, Clark  _ fucking  _ Kent.

Sure, the alien superhero thing took some, let's say, getting used to, and sure, most days Lex would kill him as soon as look at him.  But part of him will always be the outcast teenager with ambitions and desires much bigger than a small Kansas town, and that outcast teenager fell in love and hasn't looked back since.

Anyway, all of this brings them here, to this moment: Clark — well,  _ Superman _ — unconscious and bound to a table in a room lit with red sunlight.

All Lex has to do, he thinks, is press a button, and a laser he built for just this moment will fire, and the world loses Superman.  With the touch of a button, he  _ wins. _

So why hasn't he done it?  Why is he simply standing here?

He hates to admit it even to himself.

He tries to tell himself that he's waiting until Superman wakes, that he doesn't want to allow Superman the peace of dying in his sleep.

But it's not that. 

No, what it  _ is  _ is that he has built  _ so much  _ of his life around the presence of Superman, around  _ this man _ .  From their high school years, when Clark’s friendship was a reason to live despite his father’s abuse, to now, where conflict with Superman has defined his adulthood.

He’s thirty-two years old.  If he kills Superman, he has no framework for a path forward.

He approaches the table, his face twisted into a dark expression.  Here, now, unconscious, he can barely even  _ see _ the Superman in Clark Kent, despite the fact that he’s wearing the suit.

In sleep, he is unmistakably Clark Kent, and Lex has spent the last sixteen years running from the memory of the  _ best _ years he had in high school.  Running from  _ Clark _ , because of  _ course _ it couldn't work out.  Of course, everything had to go wrong.

Clark was the best thing in his life, and now, Lex knows he's always been a liar, too.

His thumb hovers over the button.   _ Finish it _ , a part of him hisses.  He pretends he doesn't know why he doesn't.

Mercy's voice crackles over the loudspeaker, suddenly, pulling his attention away from Superman.  “Mr. Luthor, you have five minutes until the board meeting. Should I inform the board you won’t be attending?”

It’s tempting, of course it is.  But he sighs, and puts the remote down.  

“No, Mercy, I’ll be up in a moment.”

Damn  _ responsibilities _ .

 

* * *

 

When he comes back from his meeting, Superman is awake.

“Good,” he says.  “I did  _ so _ want you to be awake while I killed you.” It's easy to slip back into the persona of this conflict, to put away his  _ own _ conflicts, when he has an audience.

Superman sighs.  “Is that what you're doing?” he asks.  

“Obviously.” He gestures at the laser.  “I know you're not stupid, Superman.” He won't call him  _ Clark.   _ Not here, not now.  “You're going to die today.”

“And how is this any different from last time, Lex?  Or the time before that?”

“Shut up,” he snaps.

This time he'll do it.  This time, he won't be interrupted, or sabotaged.  This time, Superman  _ will  _ die.

“Right.”  Lex isn't looking at Superman, but he thinks he hears...exhaustion? in his voice.  Like he's tired of the back and forth.  _ Get it over with. _

As if Lex hasn't tried!

The remote is in his hand, his thumb hovering over the kill switch.  “Any last words, Superman?”

He's not stalling.  Not at all.

“Nothing you want to hear,” Superman says, and  _ fuck _ , the burr of his voice is suddenly all Smallville.  

“Presumptuous of you.”

His thumb still hovers.  He has to do it. He  _ has _ to.  This is everything he’s worked toward for nearly a decade now.  

_ Coward. _  His mind is against him, now.   _ You know why you won’t do it. _

He turns away, looking toward the door, and he's ashamed of himself.  It eats at him, and he wants to kill Superman.  _ Desperately.   _ More than he's ever wanted anything, except one thing.

The one thing he can  _ never  _ have if Superman is dead.

_ You can't have it anyway.  He never loved you the way you loved him.  You gave him all your secrets, and he gave you none of his.   _

His hands are shaking now.

Damnable  _ hope. _  Damn him, and damn Clark, and damn Krypton itself.

The remote drops from his shaking hand, hitting the floor and activating the  _ other  _ button, the one that releases the mechanisms tying Superman down.  Lex can hear the metal clicking, Superman's brief inhale, but he cannot turn to look.

Footsteps behind him.  “Lex?”

“ _ Go. _ ” The word tears itself from his mouth, and he's humiliated by the anguish in his voice.

He can hear Superman hesitate for just a moment, before he turns and flees for the world outside — the world that cannot know about this moment of weakness.

He'll demolish this room.  It's a basement. He'll just fill it in.

Maybe that will do.

 

* * *

 

Of course, it can't simply end there.

 

* * *

 

Three days after The Incident, Lex enters his office to find it already inhabited.  Clark Kent stands before him, awkwardly watching his face as he realizes who he's looking at.

“What.”

“I...I know you know,” he opens with.  “That I'm Superman. I've known for a while now.”

Lex tsks at him.  “Late to the party.  What the  _ hell  _ are you doing in my office?*

Clark licks his lower lip — an old nervous habit that Lex remembers all-too-well.   _ Prom _ , whispers his traitorous brain.   _ When he slipped the corsage into your hand. _

“I have a couple of, um, questions.”

“Out with them, then.” He steels himself for the inevitable assumption, however correct it is, and hates himself for not ending this when he could have.

“Is...why do you hate Superman so much?”

The question catches him off guard.  But he can answer it, he thinks. “I don't think Earth's greatest hero should be an impossible standard to live up to.” He turns and looks out the bank of windows overlooking Metropolis.  “And I believe it diminishes us to rely on you. Why  _ bother _ saving ourselves, if Superman is there to save us?”

Clark takes a step toward him, quiet for a moment.  “The same reason you do anything  _ you _ do: because you want to prove you can.”

The quiet statement cuts him like a knife.  He says nothing to give himself away.

“You’ve always been like that.  Chip on your shoulder. Bigger than your bones could hold.”  Clark is behind him now. “I’ve...always admired that about you, you know.”

Lex stiffens.  “...What?”

Clark lets out a quiet laugh.  “I always did, Lex. You were...you  _ are _ capable of being so much bigger, so much greater than people expect.  Because you’ve always been striving for something bigger. I admire that.”

“You, admiring ambition?” Lex can’t help but be a little bitter.  “How condescending.”

“You’re twisting my words around to hurt yourself, and I don’t like it,” Clark tells him.  He can feel Clark now, right behind him, so close that if Lex had hair on the back of his neck, Clark’s breath would be stirring it.

If a man could die from fruitless wanting, Lex would be dead a thousand times by a thousand cuts by now.

He shifts, turns his head enough to see a piece of Clark out of the corner of his eye.  “You said you had  _ questions. _  That was only one.”

“Why didn’t you do it?  When you had me strapped to that table.  You could’ve killed me.” Clark’s voice is soft, but genuinely confused and curious.  Lex wants so badly to hate him for that. “So why didn’t you?”

“Why should I tell you anything?”  He’s already given Clark more than he’s ever given any other person, man  _ or _ woman in his life.  

Clark shifts a little.  “Because it might help?”

“I don’t see how.”

“I don’t want to say anything, in case I’m wrong,” Clark says.  “But...there was a reason. An important one. And it might be good if you told me.”

Lex turns a little more toward him, brows furrowing.  “Why?”

“If it’s what I think, it might just fix everything.”  Clark takes a deep breath, meeting his eyes steadily. The have always been the color Lex thinks of when someone says  _ blue _ , and part of Lex just wants to get lost in them.

“No, it won’t.”  Lex is sure of that, because he  _ has _ to be sure about it.

He  _ cannot _ be wrong.  If he has been wrong all this time — if Clark was capable of — if this whole conflict has been a farce from the beginning —

Then he would have been rendered a  _ fool _ by all of it.

“It wouldn’t be easy,” Clark concedes.  “There’s...we’ve done a lot to each other.  But if I’m right...I think we could fix it. If you were willing to try.”

Oblique, for sure, but a clear overture.

“Do you  _ know _ what you’re asking?” Lex asks him, voice tense.  

Clark nods, just a little.  “That’s why it wouldn’t be easy.  But it would — Jesus, Lex, I  _ miss _ you.”  His voice cracks, just a little, at the end.  “Do you miss me?”

He does.  Every damn minute of every day.

Smallville haunts him.  Clark Kent is a ghost he keeps in his head, the subject of so much wanting, even from when they were young.  

And of all the things Lex has been greedy for in his life, it is Clark who is the only thing he has never been able to have.  He conquered Superman, then let him go, because, as it turns out, conquest was never going to be enough.

He still wants  _ more _ .  

The moment stretches, a response trapped in Lex’s chest like a caged animal, and it’s so quiet that you could hear a diamond drop onto jeweler’s felt.

Clark is waiting for him.  All evidence points to the idea:

_ He is wanted in return. _

That is the crux of it: the thing he wants most is his, if he could only reach out and snatch it up.  Give into greed, give up pride in favor of another sin.

That’s all it will take.

“Does it matter, if I did?” he finally says, forcing it past his pride and his teeth.  “Does anything I want from you  _ matter, _ Clark?  What are you driving at?”

Something lights in Clark’s eyes.  Not predatory, no, but  _ hopeful _ , and Lex doesn’t know what to do with that.

“I want to believe you let me go because...not just because of our history.  That it’s more than that.” Clark can’t seem to spit it out either, and part of Lex is somehow  _ comforted _ by that.  This is much too big for either of them alone to name.  “Is it more than that?”

His whole world is on a cliff’s edge.  He’d feel more stable dangling from the top of this tower.

“You know it is,” he breathes, and his chest is tight with what can only be  _ hope _ .  Hope, which has only ever followed Clark’s presence in his life.  Without Clark, he is not a man that  _ hopes _ .

And he doesn’t know what kind of man he is  _ with _ Clark, but he  _ wants _ Clark, and that is the hinge he turns on.

Greed and damnable hope drive him, and he drives himself into Clark, his mouth finding his and his mind reveling in the act of having.  

Clark kisses back, and Lex’s greed undoes them both.

For once, it is a happy ending.


End file.
